ORPHEA

The ancient myth of the musician Orpheus, who wants to bring back his beloved from the underworld and defeat the hellhound with the power of music, is more than 2,000 years old. When Khavn, Kluge and the whole team sat together after the premiere of their film HAPPY LAMENTO in Venice, the idea of filming this material came up. At the same time it was sad that Orpheus could not really bring his Eurydice to the light in all the repetitions of this myth, and it was incomprehensible to everyone that the natural gesture of looking back at the beloved should be eternally punished with her death. One must risk a change of sex. Maybe an ORPHEA can “actually bring her beloved back from hell”. Music is an art from the rib of Eve.

Nothing in ORPHEA is secure, everything here is rhythm. Orphea has left behind the ancient tragedy with its iron standards: Believing in the mammoths of the imagination, in the power of music and the capacity for love that underlies all cinema.

Alexander Kluge (© Markus Kirchgessner), Khavn (© J. Moreno) photos © Kairos Film/Rapid Eye Movies